2017- Eleanor Sholz

Eleanor Scholz is a visual artist, hailing from San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and currently NYC. For the last several years, she’s worked primarily with wood burning (pyrography), ornate illustration, and geometric design. She uses geometric patterns as a tool to provoke moments of wakefulness and reverence. By combining beauty and patterns with contemporary imagery and symbols, she aims to draw visual connections between the human impulse to illuminate and transcend, and modern culture, which is rooted in the physical, material world.

In January 2017, Eleanor began wood burning an intricate design onto 9 large panels, inspired by natural and architectural elements found around the area. By referencing the landscape and man-made features of Habitable Spaces in a large, ornate, geometric pattern, she captured and emphasized the essence of the space, in a piece that transformed and elevated the Common House into a place that inspires deep appreciation for the collective and creative environment. The 215 square foot ceiling was then installed into our dining room.

Several of Eleanor’s prior pieces have used patterns to build creatures or beings, that are given different “functions” depending on what symbols she incorporates into their designs. Her design interacts with the ceiling so that parts of the ceiling can feature a pantheon of sorts, whose functions are relevant to the ideals of Habitable spaces.

Eleanor gave an artist talk April 22nd, as well as a geometric art workshop and wood burning demonstration.

Eleanor’s Artist Statement

In my experience, dining halls are the heart of a collective; they are the meeting space, living space, and the place where community members build the strongest connections. It makes sense to me to have a large artwork that inspires reverence and awe installed here–emphasizing the importance of the structure, and its function for the collective as a whole.